New magnetic material could revolutionize computer hard drives

Only a small shift in temperature is needed to dramatically alter magnetism of the metal bilayer - a tremendously useful property in electronic engineering, the BBC reported. Ivan Schuller, of the University of California, San Diego, said that no other material known to man can do this.

The material combines thin layers of both nickel and vanadium oxide, to create a structure that's surprisingly responsive to heat.

Schuller said that they can control the magnetism in just a narrow range of temperature - without applying a magnetic field, asserting that in principle they could also control it with voltage or current.

He said that at low temperatures, the oxide is an insulator, adding that at high temperatures it's a metal and in between it becomes this strange material.